It’s a question that can cause tension and tears in a circle of home-school moms in a Bible Belt church fellowship hall.
It’s a question that can have the same jarring impact in a circle of feminist mothers in a Manhattan coffee shop.
Here it is: Will you buy your daughter a Barbie doll? Other questions follow in the wake of this one, linked to clothes, self-esteem, cellphones, makeup, reality TV shows and the entire commercialized princess culture.
I have to say that I am growing to love a lot of Terry Mattingly’s work – having discovered him through GetReligion. He has a real knack for highlighting issues that don’t so much transcend the liberal/conservative divide, as interact with both ‘camps’. And this sometimes creates some surprising resonances between people otherwise divided into very different world-views and value systems. He quietly underlines a key point he keeps making on GetReligion – doctrine (even secular doctrine) matters, but it doesn’t always cash out into simple responses to issues that can be easily categorized with just a couple of ‘boxes’.
Dr Harmon, when you have some discretionary time, you may find Melinda Tankard Reist, located in Oz, of interest for articles of this kind of nature. She’s fighting a multi-pronged campaign against the sexualization of women and girls – both porn, and non-porn advertising and product targeting. And she’s had some definite successes in getting some companies to withdraw some advertising campaigns and products.
As most of us would no doubt be aware of the irony, she seems to be getting more success at least in part because she is not a Christian (as far as I can tell), and so can’t be ‘boxed’ by the media, even though she is strongly supported by many Christians who know of her work. Her website is: http://melindatankardreist.com/
Tearful confrontations over a Barbie doll? Really? And I noticed the almost perfunctory comment about the doll being “white and blonde,” as if that’s a crime now, too. Generations of females have played with Barbie dolls and I don’t really think that in itself affected their sexuality or self-esteem one jot. Barbie is customizable — you can put her in a variety of homes, outfits, and scenarios to suit, which is rather the point.
Yes, the tarty-looking Bratz dolls may cause a reaction and padded bras for pre-teens are outrageous. But knee-jerk nos to everything without conveying and applying a real and consistent philosophy and helping one’s kids navigate this bizarre world are much more problematic.
Teatime2, it’s not just Barbie being white and blond (which I really don’t worry about) or the issue of whether she has an influence on the sexualization of young girls. It is the whole consumer culture she has come to symbolize.
I doubt most parents object to a girl just playing with Barbies. The objection comes from all the crap one is supposed to have in order to make playing with Barbies the happiest experience your daughter can have. Clothes, lots and lots of clothes. Playhouses. Boats. Cars. The ultimate vacation experience. Barbie is on a binge.
I totally understand parents who object to the message children may get from Barbie. I understand them being concerned that the emphasis on appearance and consumerism may not be the world view they want their children to embrace.
It may not be worth a tearful confrontation but passing on our values to our children is certainly worthy of our consideration. If a parent believes Barbie will countermand those values then they have every reason to say no.
Paula,
That’s where parental responsibility kicks in. Can’t parents limit the accessories and simply say NO? That’s what my parents did. In fact, if we wanted more clothes, furniture or things for our dolls and stuffed animals, we made them ourselves out of scraps of cloth, ribbons, boxes, whatever we had on hand.
Every single toy or gadget can be an exercise in buying more, more, more or it can be bought and used appropriately. Barbie is no different and at least she can be used to teach about paths and choices.
I really doubt that a plastic doll is more of an influence in the whole consumerism extravaganza than parents and siblings who line up and camp out to buy the latest Apple product or stampede Walmart for cheap TVs on Black Friday. As for values and sexualization, what do parents do when idiots ask their 5-year-olds if they have a boyfriend/girlfriend yet? Laugh along and encourage it? Yep, they do. I was considered an oddball for reacting negatively when that crap was put to my son.
I’m sorry but Western culture is increasingly bizarre and it’s time for people to own up to their own behavior and not blame a doll. When the adults are getting their own indication of worth and value from the type of gadgets they have, cars they drive and homes they live in, then they’re the ones teaching consumerism to their kids. They’re also teaching them that people who don’t have all of the bells and whistles are lower on the food chain and inferior. Transferring even a little bit of that responsibility to a doll is ludicrous.
You are right Teatime and I assume the parents who nix Barbie are the ones most likely capable of the parental control so lacking today. They may simply find it easier and more in keeping with their beliefs to say no to Barbie altogether than to face I want more Barbie stuff battles over and over again.
I won the Barbie battle simply by refusing to help my daughter clothe Barbie. Frustration bred of tiny clumsy fingers trying to button and unbutton Barbie clothing soon lead to an overall disillusionment with her Plastic Majesty. Thank goodness my daughter never seized upon the idea of Nudist Barbie. I had to resort to such tactics because my daughter does not have an older brother. Older brothers are very good at tormenting sisters by inflicting the most gruesome of tortures on their Barbies. This leads to a defensive self detachment from the doll and soon outright abandonment often happens.
My parents didn’t even consider getting me a Barbie doll — she wasn’t the sort of girl that they wanted me to model after. ; > )
They bought me other things that were more in keeping with the models they deemed worthy.
If folks think Barbie is a good model for their girls then by all means buy her. I play on purchasing the Maggie Thatcher doll whenever she is made available.
The point was for the child to impose herself and try out her interests on the doll, not the other way around. Why would you want your daughter to look to Barbie OR Thatcher instead of developing her own strengths and values?
My friends and I played out adventures with our GI Joe and Barbie dolls. They weren’t very tidy and rarely had all of their limbs but the dolls weren’t the important thing — the adventures were. At one point, none of our Barbies’ heads would stay on without assistance because they’d gone “white-water rafting” too often, so we wound thin strips of masking tape around their necks, drew beads on the tape, and called them chokers, lol.
But many kids today do seem to need others to micro-manage and structure their play, don’t they? It’s sad to see the fallout from no or limited imagination as the kids get older. So many have difficulty seeing beyond their often stark reality and can’t envision anything else.